<p>I am pretty happy about how this sounds, although it is pretty long.I am hoping to send this out Monday, so I will probably fine tune it over the weekend. I actually haven't run it by <em>anyone</em> yet, so consider yourself honored :)</p>
<pre><code> Throughout my college search, which began unofficially somewhere around my freshman or sophomore year in high school, I have been extremely fortunate to have a slew of people willing to assist me. My parents volunteered to take days off from work in order to drive up to see certain schools. My guidance counselor was always available to meet with me and answer my questions. Most of all, however, I have been very fortunate to have a great deal of friends who had completed their admissions process, successfully in their minds, and were willing to answer any and all of my questions about applying to college.
The one thing that my friends, now freshmen in college, had told me worked for them was having the freedom to choose between the schools that they were accepted to. Nearly all of them had not fallen in love with a particular school by the early decision deadline, and did not feel ready to commit to a single school. I debated applying to Tufts at the Early Decision I because at the time, I was uncertain about whether or not I wanted to commit to a single school. I decided that in the next month and a half that I would revisit all of the schools on my list more thoroughly, and hopefully be able to make a clear-cut decision by the second Early Decision deadline.
In November, the stumbling-block preventing me from totally committing to a certain school was more social than academic. In terms of the information I had gathered on Tufts: Information from my guidance counselor, from the Tufts brochure and information sessions at Tufts, as well as from word of mouth, Tufts seemed like an ideal fit for someone looking to study international relations. The presence of the Fletcher School on campus is something that is very appealing to someone as interested in politics as I am. Also, the experimental college has intrigued me greatly, as I would be extremely interested in taking a class on a subject, or possibly even teaching a class in my junior or senior year. Courses like Producing Films for Social Change, which intrigues me as someone who love not only watching films, but creating them as well, and The Press and the Presidential Election, which interests me as someone interested in journalism, are something that I have not seen at any other college. In addition to that, Tufts study abroad program is something that is very appealing to someone like myself, who has had great experiences visiting other parts of the world, and is very eager to explore even more of the world. But most of all, what appealed the most to me academically was that although Tufts had less than 10,000 students, and a liberal-arts focused ciriculum, that it has all of the resources of a major research university, two things that have been toward the very top of my priority list, when searching for schools.
My parents and I decided to plan a trip to re-visit Boston-area schools during the Veterans Day weekend. The Red Sox had just won the World Series, and Boston was exploding with energy. Throughout the three days which I stayed in Boston, I began to fell in love with its culture, whether it be Bostons museums, theatre or music, as well as the citys remarkable energy. On Saturday of that weekend, I called my friend Gillian, a freshman at Tufts, and asked if she could show me around Tufts, and introduce me to some students there. It had snowed the night before, and when I arrived at Tufts, the entire campus had a beautiful blanket of snow on itI had never quite realized how pretty a campus Tufts had until then. I spent that afternoon with Gillian, as she showed me around the campus. She brought me to the dining hall where I ate lunch and met a bunch of her friends. She took me to the library, to the student center and showed me her dorm roomall of the amendaties were very impressive. . When I asked her about the activites Tufts has, she probably talked for about twenty minutes, and then told me about tuftslife.com, saying that that website can probably give me a better picture than she could. When I visited the website, I was astonished by not only the amount of activites, but how many of them were activites that I would actually partake in. In the grand scheme of things, details like food, and the quality of the library might seem relatively inconsequential. But to me, a high school student trying to decide if a certain school is where I want to spend four years, being able to visualize myself in a certain surrounding is something that is very important. I can safely say that Tufts is very much where I want to go to school, and that is the reason why I am applying Early Decision.
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